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Most people prefer traditional architecture

• throwaway713 14d ago
  I think the perspective from inside vs outside the buildings is important. Consider Meta’s classic campus vs their newer buildings designed by Frank Gehry. I like the exterior appearance of the classic campus much better as it feels “friendlier”, but from the inside, it flips drastically. The newer buildings are far superior in every way compared to the dimly lit, fluorescent feeling you get inside the older buildings with the small windows.
• aaron695 15d ago
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• beachy 15d ago
  > Respondents preferred the traditional design by 74 percent to 26 percent. There was almost no variation by social class, and only modest variation by political party. Older people were, as in most studies, more traditional than younger people, but even 18–24s still preferred the traditional design by 61 to 39 percent. I might be missing something but isn't this all a bit of a no-brainer? In the old days, buildings were made to impress, to project wealth, to show the generosity of wealthy benefactors to their town or city. Take a look around somewhere like historic Bruges, which benefited from the wealth of local merchants. Incredibly impressive. Not remotely cost effective. Today, buildings are typically functional, or at least financial considerations are top of mind. And cheaper tends to be uglier. Why would someone invest in an elaborate and expensive design when they could simply throw up a slab of brutalist concrete and punch some windows into it? It's all the same to the workers inside. And of course for older folks, older buildings are closer to what they grew up with. Even if only a bit. Seems a natural effect for older people to enjoy older architecture.
  • bad_username 15d ago
    > Why would someone invest in an elaborate and expensive design when they could simply throw up a slab of brutalist concrete and punch some windows into it? But why do the students of architecture prefer brutalism? I don't believe they factor the financials in when they choose which picture they like better.
    • 7bit 15d ago
      Because the commenter you're replying to has no idea what brutalism is, and is confusing a ugly concrete block with holes in it with brutalism.
      • IslandRebel 14d ago
        I've seen plenty of examples of Brutalism in architecture (in the UK) first hand and to most people it looks like ugly concrete blocks with hole in it.
        • rbanffy 14d ago
          Sometimes being "ugly" is the point. You want to bring out emotions - the building can be grandiose, imposing, surprising, but, if you look closely, it's a carefully crafted work of art that's also highly functional. One great example from the city where I grew up: https://hicarquitectura.com/2024/09/lina-bo-bardi-sesc-pompeia/ https://hicarquitectura.com/2024/09/lina-bo-bardi-sesc-pompe...
          • IslandRebel 14d ago
            I don't care for this argument at all. There are functional buildings where I live from the Industrial Revolution that look quite nice. I want things to look nice where I live. I don't want them to be ugly and demoralising. As for the building you showed me. I think it looks awful. It actually looks worse than the architecture in movie Equilibrium. https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/rtf-architectural-reviews/a6236-an-architectural-review-of-the-movie-equilibrium/ https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/rtf-architectural-revie...
            • rbanffy 13d ago
              > It actually looks worse than the architecture in movie Equilibrium. Taste is extremely subjective. I am an engineer and I've spent a whole career training my tastes (for system design, hardware architecture) to be less subjective and help guide my work towards what's good. Some of that seems to have leaked to building and city planning, because my taste seems to align well with the experts in those fields.
  • ithkuil 14d ago
    Plenty of old people now grew up in a phase in history where we were building ugly cheap things
    • bradyd 14d ago
      That was all of history.
  • rdwrrr 14d ago
    Perhaps counter intuitive but beauty standards are not simply just sentiment.
    • rbanffy 14d ago
      And also change a lot over time.
  • fangspire 14d ago
    >In the old days, buildings were made to impress Google "survivorship bias".
    • like_any_other 14d ago
      If survivorship bias had anything to do with it, you would not have old villages where every house is in the same style, and they're all beautiful. There's simply no evidence that old buildings were randomly ugly or beautiful, and only the beautiful ones survived. Look at 1950s New York - almost every building is beautiful, and every building is more beautiful than modern ones: https://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2020/01/31/new-york-city-in-color/ https://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2020/01/31/new-york-city-i... That's not survivorship bias, that's going from near-uniformly beautiful to uniformly-ugly.
      • vel0city 14d ago
        Almost all the buildings in those postcards look old, plain, and boring to me. Some look decent. The Radio City Music Hall building, while definitely impressive for 1932, just looks old and worn out and it's and old postcard. Ooh wow another government building in the classical revival style with big tall roman pillars making up a Portico made from white stone, how original, never seen that before. And are you really telling me the building on the left here actually looks good? That's the kind of building you'd love to walk past every day, the kind of building you'd want to spend all day inside? These buildings look like they're covered in tons of nasty soot and gunk and generally don't seem like clean places to be. https://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Postcard-park-avenue-new-york-central-building-color-1950s.jpg https://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01... Personally I'd prefer to spend my time in and around a building like this than any of those: https://labs.utdallas.edu/mems/files/2021/08/nserloutside.jpg https://labs.utdallas.edu/mems/files/2021/08/nserloutside.jp... To me a building like this looks a lot more interesting. Lots of mixtures in materials, textures, and colors. And as mentioned before, this building lets in a lot of natural lighting. It lets you see outside instead of just constantly feeling like you're trapped in a jail cell. Its not even like I really hate old architecture, I just think a lot of these examples given suck. I like this, for example (although it is getting close to overstylized for my taste): https://www.adventuresofacarryon.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/dallas-foto-walk-2.jpg https://www.adventuresofacarryon.com/wordpress/wp-content/up... Buildings like this as well, although definitely not as much natural light. Notice its actually nice, clean, and maintained compared to the other examples given. Still kind of old and boring though in the end. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Dallas_County_Admin_Building.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Dallas_C...
  • like_any_other 14d ago
    > In the old days, buildings were made to impress, to project wealth, to show the generosity of wealthy benefactors to their town or city. Take a look around somewhere like historic Bruges, which benefited from the wealth of local merchants. Incredibly impressive. Take a look at any old poverty-stricken farming village. It'll be strikingly beautiful compared to anything modern. This is the Anamosa state prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamosa_State_Penitentiary#/media/File:Anamosa_State_Penitentiary_2.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamosa_State_Penitentiary#/me... This is Anamosa middle school: https://www.anamosa.k12.ia.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/IMG_8670.jpg https://www.anamosa.k12.ia.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/IMG... > Not remotely cost effective. This is the main building of the Ontario college of art and design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCAD_University#/media/File:OCAD_University_(52662465213).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCAD_University#/media/File:OC... Why are we still humoring the "cost effective" explanation, when, whenever the people in charge of design are given free reign, they make non-cost-effective, ugly buildings, ugly in the exact same way all the other "cost effective" buildings are ugly? Whenever they are asked which they prefer visually, ignoring cost, they pick the ugly buildings. Meanwhile anything old, from farms to literal prisons, is beautiful. And all those old buildings you claim didn't care about cost effectiveness, were built in a time when the GDP per capita was 4.6x lower than today [1]. If you believe GDP measures wealth, if you believe there was economic progress and we are materially better off than in the aftermath of WWII, we should have ~4x more "wealth to project". And yet this is what we get. The explanation that fits the data is that they're building exactly what they want to build, and they're building ugly on purpose. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA/ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA/
    • vel0city 14d ago
      Personally I'd rather spend my time in the building with large windows and tons of natural light than holed up in that dark old castle thing. That prison building is overly stylized to my taste. And given how complex the exterior is and seeing it's state it's obvious it's hard to maintain. Unless you like all the gunk growing all over the building all the time. Is the old building "fancy"? Sure. So is that fragile china that's kept in the fancy vitrine but rarely actually used because it's such a pain to maintain and actually use.
  • bobthepanda 14d ago
    Also there is survivorship bias. The olden times were no stranger to slapdash, poor quality construction, but most of it has been demolished either due to having low perceived value or due to not lasting as long and people not doing the necessary lifecycle replacements.
    • xmcqdpt2 14d ago
      I had to scroll way too far to find this comment! All the terribly kept tenements that housed 10 families on two floors were also "traditional," but you can't even find them now. Even in places where there are some left, the ones still standing were probably the best of the bunch AND have been extensively repaired since.
  • Zigurd 14d ago
    The worst architecture is a combination of cost optimization and aiming for looking traditional-ish. That's a recipe for future blight.
    • rbanffy 14d ago
      Design, like so many disciplines, can't serve two masters.
  • graemep 14d ago
    So new buildings ignore externalities in the economic sense but also very literally.
  • rawgabbit 14d ago
    https://www.habitat67.com/en/ https://www.habitat67.com/en/ I find the Habitat67 brutalist apartment complex in Montreal to be tasteful and livable?
    • rbanffy 14d ago
      We need more of this.
• extrememacaroni 14d ago
  It is normal to gravitate towards beauty, it's in our nature. The root of efficiency is always someone's greed, pity that is also in our nature.
• nairboon 14d ago
  Classical and in a sense neoclassical architecture literally stood the test of time.
  • kmstout 14d ago
    "Man fears time. Time fears only the pyramids."
    • rbanffy 14d ago
      They have terrible natural lighting. Wouldn't recommend living in one.
      • Ekaros 13d ago
        Not to mention the how little usable interior area they have.
  • antisthenes 14d ago
    Many of the architectural styles didn't get enough time to stand the test of time!
  • plorg 14d ago
    Always seems weird to me that "classical" is stark white columns and sculptures. The original Greek buildings were quite colorful, it's only the intervening millenia that are responsible for wearing away their paint.
    • rbanffy 14d ago
      It is a fact they improved with prolonged exposure to the atmosphere and UV light.
• Joker_vD 14d ago
  Well then. The solution is obvious: we need to educate the public so that it attains the correct tastes. It's doable: after all, the architecture students do manage to obtain the taste for the modernist architecture during their time in the college/university. Or maybe do nothing, it's not like the public opinion really matters in the technocratic settings.
  • VorpalWay 14d ago
    I can't tell if this is serious or sarcastic. I'm going to err on the side of serious though. Maybe the majority is actually correct, and traditional architecture is just plain better. I certainly find it more welcoming than the modern concrete and glass box jungle.
    • georgefrowny 14d ago
      I do actually like the "concrete jungle" style like the Barbican and Salk Institute (by all accounts a pleasantly human place to work despite the famously stark-looking courtyard). I think the biggest problem with them is that the minute you stop maintaining things like gardens in contrast to the concrete and let it get dirty and scarred, it looks apocalyptic and stressful very quickly. Whereas even quite dilapidated neo-classical-ish buildings look innately reasonably pleasing.
      • AlanYx 14d ago
        >I think the biggest problem with them is that the minute you stop maintaining things like gardens in contrast to the concrete and let it get dirty and scarred, it looks apocalyptic and stressful very quickly. There's a trend in some Eastern European countries to paint older brutalist concrete buildings as a cost-effective measure to reduce concrete spalling and do thermo-modernization. It's actually pretty amazing how much nicer some of these buildings look even with just a uniform white paint job (others involve more color). Architects seem to be largely opposed, seeing it as an erasure of the material honesty that brutalism was supposed to represent, but IMHO it suggests that a lot of the core issue with these designs wasn't the shape or creativity of the buildings themselves but just the way the concrete look quickly aged.
• perilunar 14d ago
  There's more to architecture than just the façade, which is what people are rating when they are just looking at photos of the exterior. The interiors, structure, and services, etc. of modern building are often far superior to older ones, and i suspect many 'ordinary' people would agree.
  • antisthenes 14d ago
    If it's my building, e.g. the building that I live in - I care more about the ease of maintenance and repair than any facade. Because I spend 80% of my time indoors, and 20% working in the garden, so frankly don't even care what the building looks like. Maybe only care that the property looks neat when it's time to sell. As it stands, these studies are just cherry-picked navel gazing with extra steps. You can't design a study like this well. There are hundreds of thousands of buildings, and tens of thousands of variations of subjective preference. And all of those go out of the window as soon as practical concerns (like affordability) arise.
    • AtlasBarfed 14d ago
      Am I hot or not architecture edition? Nonetheless, I think it is a failure of architecture that modern design is ugly. It shouldn't be impossible to make good looking, practical, cost-effective buildings with all the options of materials and engineering that is available. So let's start as the baseline of these 77 to 23 blowout victories by traditional architecture. Now gradually substitute other modern designs until you can get more of a 50/50 agreement at least, and hopefully 60/40 in favor of modernism. You could be right. Some of these might be cherry picked bad modern designs. From the article one of them looked like it should have the wicked witch of the West telling her pretties to fly out from their caves to go attack Dorothy. Another one looks like a massive collection of missile launch tubes. Some designs I almost have to laugh at, when almost similarly disjointed mcmansion hell type monstrosities are snootily dismissed.
  • Analemma_ 14d ago
    Yes, every time people get grumpy about modern architecture and look over to see if I agree I tell the story about how I used to work at a company in Boston which moved from a beautiful 19th century building to a soulless Modernist steel-and-glass skyscraper. And thank fucking god: the old building was too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, had too little natural light, and was too cramped. The Modernist building was better to actually be in in every way. Buildings are there to be used, not just looked at in pictures.
• expedition32 14d ago
  When I was a child I saw Blade Runner. Ever since that day I've had a weakness for concrete jungles. Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai- that's how humans were intended to live. Unfortunately my European brothers and sisters prefer to live in open air museums. However slowly but surely skyscrapers have been creeping up into the Netherlands- you just can't beat the efficiency.
  • alchemism 14d ago
    You might like Athens, in that case.
  • TacticalCoder 14d ago
    > ... that's how humans were intended to live Humans weren't meant to be packed like ants. Wrong species.
    • rbanffy 14d ago
      Ants pack themselves.
  • trgn 14d ago
    hive cities do have a charm
  • ogogmad 14d ago
    I don't see why this got downvoted. The heart wants what the hive wants.
  • Anamon 10d ago
    > you just can't beat the efficiency. High-rise buildings are extremely inefficient compared to low-rise buildings, in pretty much every dimension except amount of people packed per area.
• VoodooJuJu 14d ago
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• Zigurd 14d ago
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  • vintagedave 14d ago
    Something fascinating that you may not know: traditional architecture is one of those things that is simultaneously: a) Genuinely widely preferred, with many articles on this, ranging from aesthetic preferences through to scientific studies of how eyes move and what causes fatigue. There is genuine value to architecture before modern architecture -- and... b) A stalking horse for right-wing thinking. It's really interesting how this happens and it mirrors other right-wing techniques. A common way to get people into right-wing thinking is to find something that is genuinely unpopular or that people have concerns about, yet which has constrained discourse. Examples: lower incomes. You then talk about the good old days, and reframe it: lower incomes becomes, 'people taking your income, agh those immigrants'. Architecture becomes, '1940 and before were better, oh and everyone was white then'. You get the idea. Another popular one on social media is the Greek and classical world, especially its comparative lack in modern education compared to, say, 1900. That's an easy intro to colonialism and racism, disguised in the neutral or even interesting format of ancient history. Once you recognise this, you see it everywhere. But don't let this fool you re older architecture having genuine value. We just have to avoid saying people have no taste, or referring to their preferences as 'pabulum'. That is condescending, makes normal people feel unheard, and then when someone does hear them on the innocuous subject of architecture, they pay attention to what else that person says.
    • Zigurd 14d ago
      I'm kind of counting on normal being in the minority here.
      • rbanffy 14d ago
        Abnormal isn't distributed along a single axis.
    • 0xWTF 14d ago
      > That is condescending, makes normal people feel unheard, and then when someone does hear them on the innocuous subject And that is why all the pollsters were caught flat-footed by Trump in 2016. The people who did feel unheard learned to not respond.
• addaon 14d ago
  "Traditional" isn't really defined here, but seems to mean "first half of the 20th century," which feels like a relatively narrow tradition. Not a lot of preference for teepees and yurts.
  • daemonologist 14d ago
    People definitely like teepees and yurts (and thatched roofs, dry stone walls, log cabins, etc.), it's just that at some point the practicality gap becomes too wide to contemplate. But this is a reasonable point to raise. Although both would serve their purpose a concrete viaduct is much cheaper to build than a masonry one, to the point that it may be difficult to justify the latter no matter how strong the public preference is for it.
    • Abstract_Typist 14d ago
      Somehow, it always makes me smile that the Glenfinnan Viaduct (as seen in Harry Potter) is concrete. I'm not sure quite why.
  • wasabi991011 14d ago
    Not to mention their comparison, modernist architecture, is just mid-century. There is post-modern architecture after that and arguably also contemporary architecture further after that (however vaguely defined).
• nobodywillobsrv 14d ago
  This feels frustrating. They are comparing "same buildings" with AI but I would imagine they are not controlling cost. Imagine gargoyles and metal dragons on drainpipes and all the ornamentation now and how much that would cost. People prefer ancient dry stone walls over fences but they cost orders of magnitude differently. I wonder if with robots and what not if we will see a resurgence in detail and ornamentation and other kinds of expensive but nice constructions.
  • AlexandrB 14d ago
    Cost is a big factor, but so are modern building codes. Some classic architectural features are outright illegal to build in 2026. Others might be allowed, but there's almost no one left who knows how to do it (e.g. plaster walls or ceilings). Robots are not going to bring any of this back because robots will just create a new set of optimizations and constraints needed to make robotic construction cheaper and easier. If modern cars (which are the result of similar optimization) are anything to go by, this will result in output that's easy to build but hard to maintain or modify - so largely a continuation of existing trends. Take a look at "3d printed" houses for an imperfect example of this kind of optimization for automation in action. Better robotics will bring about a more balanced version of this trade-off (walls will probably be possible to modify, unlike 3d printed ones) but the incentives remain the same. Edit: Trivial example: One of the easiest way to autonomously insulate a house will probably be with spray foam insulation - you can get a robot arm to hold the sprayer and move it in a specific, continuous motion pretty readily even today. But spray foam insulation is hard to modify after the fact. Removing it is time-intensive compared to removing insulation "batting" and applying it again requires specialized tools, PPE, and perhaps licensing.
• petsfed 14d ago
  Next thing you're gonna tell me that English speakers overwhelmingly prefer novels written in English. Cultures have visual languages just the same as they have written and spoken (and signed) languages. The crucifix symbol has an understood meaning in most European cultures, because of how foundational Christianity is to their cultures. Is it really so surprising that people prefer buildings in a visual language they already understand? There's also this paragraph at the very end: >If this is true, a greater puzzle comes into view. Almost every architectural school in the world exclusively teaches broadly modernist styles, and probably more than 99 percent of architects practice exclusively in them. In Britain, there has been hardly a single public commission in a traditional style since the 1950s, and only a trickle of commercial and institutional ones. Except in the market for private housing, traditional styles have been virtually extinct for seven decades. Although in some cases this can be explained by anti-traditional planning rules, the broad trend is still evident in jurisdictions whose development control systems are stylistically neutral. In a world where we've seen nothing but modernist designs for 70 years, is it really that surprising that people might prefer novel designs? Especially novel designs in a style they are repeatedly told is better, or references a more refined time?
  • saimiam 14d ago
    Seems to me that your positions are in opposition to each other. 1. There’s a traditional visual language that people instinctively prefer. 2. Modern architectural sensibilities have superseded traditional visual language through repetition. I’m reading this to mean something like “people like their own traditional foods but since they've been drowning in pizza for the last 70 years, they’ve forgotten about their traditional foods.” How can a basal, instinctive preference just disappear? Can the sex drive disappear with enough brainwashing?
    • petsfed 14d ago
      I'm not claiming that people instinctively prefer anything. I'm saying that they've been socialized to believe that "traditional" architecture is some indicator of societal excellence. I don't think its weird that people report a bias they've been taught to have. The article even seems aware of this possibility when it mentions that architecture students prefer modernism (with the semi-covert implication that their education is poisoning their aesthetic sensibilities). I claim its at most partially because they've been taught to prefer modern designs, but mainly because they've been taught to think about visual languages consciously, so they are able to recognize what a given architect is trying to do, in a way that a layperson might not. That's certainly why Thomas Kinkade gets as much hate as he does (that and the dodgy business practices...). I'm also not claiming that people have been starved of traditional architecture entirely, just that nobody is building things in the traditional style now. They're not tearing them down either, the White House East Wing not withstanding. This is a novelty bias, nothing more. If you only ever see neoclassical architecture in buildings that are designated as "fancy" or "special" or "august", and all these modern, ordinary buildings do not, you're going to assume that the style itself, and not simply the age and intent at construction are what contributes to that. I mean, 39 out of 50 US state capitol buildings have domes, as does the nation's capitol building. I think anybody in the US can be forgiven for thinking that dome = legitimate seat of authority. Certainly, that was the hypothesis behind the design decision. Speaking only for myself, I found Washington DC, which is all neo-classical all the time, just really boring. All the buildings look the same, and I couldn't escape the sense that I was in museum that hadn't been updated in a long time. Chicago's Fields Museum has the same quality.
• enaaem 14d ago
  There is a nice youtube channel called The Aesthetic City. There are some really nice new projects done with traditional architecture in Europe.
• mcphage 14d ago
  It’s interesting how many studies were performed that confirmed this, and yet most (all?) of the time, the modernist building was built anyway. What was the point?
  • rbanffy 14d ago
    Not all decisions should be made based on popular vote.
    • mcphage 13d ago
      Yeah, I agree with you, but I'm not sure the point of polling people in the first place.
      • rbanffy 13d ago
        I would ask about their needs, but, definitely, I would measure those if possible. People are frequently surprised about what they actually wanted (there are lots of genie stories and jokes on that theme)
• tensor 14d ago
  It seems like these comparisons are more "expensive traditional design vs low cost modern design." None of their examples had what I would consider a single expensive and nice modern design. But every single example of "traditional" design was essentially luxury pricing.
  • ifwinterco 14d ago
    The missing part is that traditional building used to be cheap (in fact the cheapest way of building things). What changed is labour costs in western countries relative to the cost of materials and other physical things
    • tensor 14d ago
      It's not just that, but that too. E.g. a cottage like this https://www.superkul.ca/projects/double-island-cottage/ https://www.superkul.ca/projects/double-island-cottage/ vs a "traditional" cottage. I'm sure people have preferences for both, but to me this is still a beautiful design where all the examples in the article are just low cost ugly designs. Or on the flip side, go with cheap "traditonal design" like https://mcmansionhell.com/post/809937203073581056/mctuscan-heaven https://mcmansionhell.com/post/809937203073581056/mctuscan-h... and no, sorry, that's ugly as sin. I think it's true that construction in general has become cheaper over time, so comparing older buildings to newer ones often results in comparing more expensive design to cheaper design. But that's different than aesthetic. To properly compare aesthetic they should normalize for cost at least, if not also execution. I suppose they did have the expert vs non-expert study, but the only example they showed from it had a hideous buildings in both types so I'm not sure what that's supposed to really accomplish.
    • everybodyknows 14d ago
      Material costs changed too. Hardwood slats over a raised perimeter foundation used to be the cheapest way. Nowadays that would be a premium build.
    • solid_fuel 14d ago
      > The missing part is that traditional building used to be cheap (in fact the cheapest way of building things). This is only partially true. Traditional building used to be cheaper than it is now, yes, but things like ornate decorations and facades were still expensive additional work. It's worth considering the survivorship bias here - the traditional buildings people know and love are the ones that were well built and cared for.
• shen 14d ago
  Most people also prefer IKEA furniture.
  • tonyedgecombe 14d ago
    Most people prefer IKEA prices.
    • shen 14d ago
      Thanks for stating my point.
      • lanfeust6 14d ago
        Since the topic is preference qua aesthetics, your "point" wasn't analogous.
        • shen 14d ago
          It wasn’t meant to be analogous.
• DGAP 14d ago
  In public spaces I have no doubt this is the case. I'm more curious about residential though - see huge interesting in MCM over the last decades. I am biased but I think there is a great deal of interest in warm, modernist spaces with ideas like natural materials and lots of natural lighting, especially when compared to the beige boxes of American home building.
  • analog31 14d ago
    Indeed, the beige boxes are neither modernist nor classicist. My family lives in a MCM house built around 1960. We bought it in a "hot" market where you couldn't be particular about anything. We chose a house based on location and the interior.
• boh 14d ago
  Modernism is the act of using cheaper resources and more standardized/cheaper methods of production. The aesthetic is more of a side-effect of those limits. Ugliness has become a cultural norm in order to suit the modern economy. It may come as a surprise but it required years of cultural development and education for most people to accept the work of Dieter Rams as some aesthetic pinnacle rather than soulless mass production. It's only recently, (with designs like the Ferrari EV for instance) that people are starting to see how limited our aesthetic language has become. Modernism is too cheap to replace so the "beauty" of soulless minimalism will likely endure in the zeitgeist, but it's not a very interesting environment to be in.
  • dmix 14d ago
    That plus in the early days traditional/classical architecture was rejected as "bourgeois" or aristocratic by the socialist movements who pushed for modernist approaches. See: the early days of soviet architecture and even Bauhaus in Germany was based on left-leaning/utopian ideas. So it had dual pressure, from economics because it was cheaper/efficient and from the cultural reform side.
    • interiorchurch 14d ago
      This is sort of a just-so story that isn't completely true. Stalin pushed "socialist classicism" [1] as an aesthetic, and it wasn't until his successors took over that modernist architectural ideas imported from the West became a hallmark of actually-existing socialism. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinist_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinist_architecture
      • TFNA 14d ago
        There was a whole decade of Soviet design before Stalin, which was often radically modernist even by the standards of its day, and that is what the OP was referring to. Stalin was notoriously conservative in his artistic tastes.
        • 14d ago
• hahamaster 14d ago
  I absolutely love neoclassical architecture. I wish more people were building brand new, modern neoclassical buildings that are truly beautiful in a Haussmannian way, yet as practical as modern skyscrapers.. something like 1 Mayfair in London or 150 East 78th Street in New York.
• zjp 14d ago
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• bobowzki 14d ago
  What is traditional now was once modern.
  • bhewes 14d ago
    Yes, modern is now old 1890s-1960s. Even post modernism is aging.
• slibhb 14d ago
  You see the same thing in literature, where modernism has crowded out of other styles. As one example, you see way less description today than in older books. I'm not a hater on modernism -- I like stripped down literature and architecture (though I wish concrete buildings were cleaned more regularly). But there does seem to be some truth in this idea that "the elite critics" have dominated these fields, resulting in the production of art (and buildings) that are broadly unpopular. I think the overriding goal of these critics is avoiding kitsch, which they see in classical forms.
• tancop 14d ago
  Now try 1970s public housing in Paris and Vienna, socialist blocks in Poland or projects in Chicago. It will be a lot more balanced because these places were designed for people to live in, not as radical statements. They are simple to save costs but there is no "artistic" movement behind them doing it on purpose. Abstract modernism with random shapes and obsessively minimalist design is only the worst case scenario where all the hate is justified. It's what happens when architects design for each other and not the rest of us.
  • kspacewalk2 14d ago
    The results will absolutely be the same. Having spent the first 12 years of my life in a commie block apartment, the absolute best thing that has happened to that building over the years is the trees have covered progressively more of the ugliness. Note that this article is about external visuals, not the layout or any other consideration relevant to buildings being "designed for people to live in". This is about buildings being designed for people to look at. You can design two buildings for people to live in, make them identical in layout and build quality but one of them has slightly more classical style of architecture and people will invariably prefer it, all else being equal.
    • rbanffy 14d ago
      > one of them has slightly more classical style of architecture If aesthetic sense is distributed according a bell curve, the majority of the population will have "average" taste. If you say good taste is one standard deviation above the median, then the majority will have worse taste.
  • asdff 14d ago
    Architecture schools don't really teach you the pragmatic side of the trade. Their projects are building those sorts of abstracted models, talking about forms and voids. It is just so far abstracted from the sort of practical architecture that leads to stuff like built in cupboards in a Sears catalog home. Something to also consider is while these young architects are getting trained they aren't really living like adults either. They are in their early 20s after all, still perhaps lashing out in reflexive opposition from their suburban upbringing, and probably don't understand why a built in cupboard would be so exciting.
• prodmod 14d ago
  Many have never seen a really, truly beautiful high modern home, and it shows. Lots of both traditional and modern slop out there, with gems on both sides every once in a while.
• dzonga 14d ago
  the tragedy is that architects (experts) prefer the modernist buildings. while common people prefer the classical buildings which makes cities more livable. the other tragedy is before 'regulations' normies designed buildings - they didn't have architecture degrees. don't know if that's still possible anymore. & buildings shape lives. the only way to reverse the modernist trend is to have laws that incentivize classical buildings otherwise we gonna keep getting ugly buildings.
  • rbanffy 14d ago
    > architects (experts) prefer the modernist buildings. while common people prefer the classical buildings which makes cities more livable. Good architects match modernism with livability. A couple months back I visited the Barbican Centre in London and it never ceases to amaze me how thoughtful is every little design item.
    • Nursie 14d ago
      The Barbican is a standout exception though. It always comes up in these discussion, and I think it's because in contrast to most other buildings, it was really thought through. The fact is that like in other walks of life, when talent meets opportunity then occasionally great things can happen. But that sort of outlier talent isn't evident in most architecture. As such the vast majority of the Barbican's disparate cohort of brutalist concrete buildings in the UK were not built for humans, they were built for middling architects who were never going to have to suffer living in them. They need to be razed to the ground and thankfully many/most are going that way. Stark, grey-brown, crumbling, water-stained monstrosities that just add to the feeling of misery in a country which is already stark, grey-brown, crumbling and water stained in so many other ways.
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• tolerance 14d ago
  Once there was a blackout in my neighborhood that affected commercial properties too. While driving down the street in total darkness the only structure that stuck out when my headlights pressed them was the local Mexican restaurant which isn't traditional in the least—it sort of looks like what Davy Crockett would've built if he survived the Alamo and opened a Cheesecake Factory. But it stood out that night.
• jiehong 14d ago
  To me, the public seems to prefer a design that integrates, or fit in, with the rest of the street/location it's in. Modern buildings often are their own idiosyncratic isolate in the middle of the city. When looking at movies, cities tend to have a uniform feel and look (like the elvish Rivendell), and I think people enjoy that. Like Mont-Saint-Michel in France, or the Chuxi Tulou village in Fujian, China.
  • eitally 14d ago
    When we moved to the bay area in 2015 (south bay), I was absolutely stunned at the variety of residential architecture, having come from the mid-Atlantic where everything tended to be uniform based roughly on construction date/period. Since land is exorbitantly costly, homeowners tend to build what they like, no matter whether it fits the neighborhood aesthetic or not.
• hardwaregeek 14d ago
  Perhaps there’s a difference between what people prefer looking at and what’s actually nicer to inhabit? Architecture is optimizing for people inhabiting the building, not just staring at it in a photograph. It’s like if you asked someone to judge a phone based on a photo. Yes there’s some aesthetic judgement but it matters more if the phone is usable. I know that personally I find New York’s prewar buildings more beautiful than your average soulless luxury tower. But I enjoyed living in a soulless luxury tower because it had good lighting, not terrible elevators and decent fixtures.
  • kccqzy 14d ago
    Prewar is such a big range. The surviving tenement-style apartment homes on the Lower East Side are certainly less beautiful than say The Dakota on the Upper West Side.
  • lukeify 14d ago
    > Architecture is optimizing for people inhabiting the building, not just staring at it in a photograph With modern materials and structural design you can absolutely have both.
    • kelseyfrog 14d ago
      You would have to convince the design community that form can follow things other than function. Until form is no longer synonymous with function, design will eschew ornamentation.
      • rbanffy 14d ago
        When form doesn't follow function, usability suffers.
        • AlexandrB 14d ago
          Or you can do like modern UI designers and throw both form and usability in the trash and optimize for novelty and "brand" instead.
• trgn 14d ago
  modern architecture is best understood as an expression of the ethos of efficiency. because it is cheap, easy to maintain, uniform, reproducible (which are machine values), therefore it is good, aspirational, wholesome (which are humanist values) for people. as an aside, for the longest time i have thought modernity was fully understood by the 60s (ellul, debord, macluhan, ...). but maybe there the focus was too narrowly political, sociological. it has been revealing to see this ethos (and it is an ethos, make no mistake) recently linked to autism. high modernists are uniform, monomaniacal people. like machines. and the world they fashion, is therefore one that is uniform, principled. how the unsociable autist colleague cannot distinguish between is and ought, so will modern architecture barrel down deductively to its unpleasant conclusion. modernisn is the commodification of all spheres of existence, it is an unprecedented evolution, how to break out of this, how to get of this train with only a single endpoint.
• ogogmad 14d ago
  OT, but I've discussed Gothic cathedrals with Gemini, and we don't make 'em like we used to--charitably, because they take up a lot of space? A Gothic cathedral looks like a bird with massive wings. Those "wings" are outside of the church's interior; people call them "flying buttresses"--they stop the walls from bursting outwards. Then again, I wonder whether the modern innovation of using steel under tension could enable us to make the "wings" (buttresses) smaller.
• FLeXMurphy 14d ago
  The traditional examples look sturdier and heavier. The brick bridge looks overbuilt and hence safer. The examples where arch students gave higher scores, like with that god awful-looking house, I don't have an answer to. Maybe they had terrible taste. Just because you are a student of architecture it does not mean you have good taste or how to build beautiful things that evoke a specific emotion.
• deleted 14d ago
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• collabs 14d ago
  I DO NOT prefer traditional architecture. I prefer whatever is inexpensive and practical. Hanging brick cladding in front of a modern building is neither inexpensive nor practical. What I really care about is the savings associated with this ruthless cost cutting and brutalist simplification to be passed on to the ordinary folks instead of being hoarded by the oligarchs.
  • 740273730191 14d ago
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• infakelife 14d ago
  Am I the only one who thinks they use especially weak modernist buildings as references? Maybe the average modernist building really is that bad and the issue is that "traditional" buildings are more forgiving for an average architect.
  • papa-whisky 14d ago
    This point is addressed in the article...
• lofaszvanitt 14d ago
  Just the usual things. There are a handful of gatekeepers who somehow, miraculously, dictate trends, and everyone follows them like some sacred text. To draw a parallel with porn, OnlyFans showed that people actually do not care that much about long form porn movies. I wonder when people will realize that most minimalist modern buildings are cheap, tasteless, and soulless, and start building whatever they actually find beautiful.
• rickcarlino 14d ago
  I thought this was an article about microservices.
• dfgknionio 14d ago
  Look at this picture: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5kYm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0add1605-5b10-48e4-9192-b818dec841af_2245x2560.jpeg https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5kYm!,f_auto,q_auto:... Which side is modern and which is traditional? The examples on the right are clearly more modern than the examples on the left to my eye: the left looks like it's from the '70s while the right is unmistakably 21st century. But the examples on the left are run-down, plain, and feature advertisements and bricked-up windows and steel shutters and security doors, while the examples on the right are brand new and shiny and walkable. There's graffiti in the first example and in the last one they replaced the asphalt with pavers! Hard to take the conclusions seriously when the authors have their thumbs on the scale.
  • modo_mario 13d ago
    There are some rules to classical architecture styles regarding windows and window size going upwards that the ones on the right do follow more.
• chasil 14d ago
  While my karma might get incinerated with this quote, it is incisive on traditional architecture. The author is reviled by many. “Yes, God damn it, the Parthenon!” The ruler struck the glass over the picture. “Look,” said Roark. “The famous flutings on the famous columns—what are they there for? To hide the joints in wood—when columns were made of wood, only these aren’t, they’re marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it, because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Why?”
  • snickerbockers 14d ago
    I dont prefer traditional architecture because I have high standards, I just hate all these rectangular-prism concrete stripmalls and loglo highways.
  • Animats 14d ago
    It's amusing to watch the movie version of The Fountainhead and see what are supposed to be Roarke's buildings. He likes the pedestal style, where the first floor is mostly open-work columns around a small lobby. Turns out this is terrible in cold or windy areas. Wind hits the side of the building and is forced down into the area around the lobby. Doors are forced shut by wind pressure. People are knocked off their feet. A strong wind in snow produces a horizontal blizzard. The Meteorology Building (bldg 54) at MIT was built that way, with all of the above problems. Much embarrassment. Later, much computational fluid dynamics and, in 2019, a rebuild of the plaza level with more walls.
  • chr15m 14d ago
    Because it looks good.
• alex-moon 14d ago
  > Why are we commissioning styles that we say we dislike? There are several interesting possibilities. Like what? A shadowy cabal of liberal elites pulling the strings from the shadows? Stripe (who own Works In Progress) founder Patrick Collision donated to the Trump campaign in 2024. Tiresomely obvious what this "piece" is trying to do. Find a new gimmick imho.
• quickthrowman 14d ago
  Baumol’s cost disease makes building ornamentation cost prohibitive for all except the highest profile (and budget) projects.
• contingencies 14d ago
  TLDR: Architecture optimizes for what is cheap to construct and meets the needs of the commissioning entity at the time of construction. This is often about a big facade, a dream, grandstanding or power dynamics instead of livability or community experience, particularly street acceptance. It's no wonder people prefer older architecture: it was necessarily more reasonably scaled, often more ornate and particular (since hand tools were used anyway: why not make it beautiful?), and featured now basically unavailable materials like giant timber beams which present more softly.
• lateatdesk 14d ago
  But how much say do those people have in what gets built? I can rent a flat because it's close to work without liking the building at all.
• mikeaskew4 14d ago
  Sturdy is good.
• iamnothere 14d ago
  I just wish there were more acceptance of experimentation. I like well-executed Art Deco, Art Nouveau, 60s high modernism, whatever you call the 70s angular wooden buildings, “natural” styles like adobe that use clay and wood, all kinds really. As long as a style is appropriate for the structure’s use and environment, it’s fine. But economics favors ugly boxes, and local building restrictions make it even more expensive (or even impossible) to be creative. It’s no wonder that many builders don’t bother, sticking to “safe” styles.
  • janalsncm 14d ago
    Idk, these seem pretty innovative: https://www.dezeen.com/2026/02/17/chinese-projects-completed-year-of-horse/ https://www.dezeen.com/2026/02/17/chinese-projects-completed... Not that I like all of them, but the point stands.
    • iamnothere 14d ago
      Hyper-modernism is fine too, it’s just rare to see this especially in mid size or smaller buildings. Most new buildings look like this: https://weburbanist.com/2019/11/28/restyling-blandmarks-those-much-maligned-boxy-urban-condo-buildings/ https://weburbanist.com/2019/11/28/restyling-blandmarks-thos... And most new single family housing is similarly generic.
• Onavo 14d ago
  The exterior perhaps but definitely not the interior. If you visit Europe, the interiors are all small and cramped.
  • modo_mario 13d ago
    Depends on the era and place. Very old farm houses generally had low ceilings but hey, the people were shorter and you cooked under an open chimney so better have a small space to heat. Later classic buildings especially in cities had higher ceilings and consequentially a more roomy vibe than modern residential buildings.
• protocolture 14d ago
  Yeah "prefer" over other aesthetics. But most people will prioritise cost (both capex and opex) and comfort over aesthetics.
• lanfeust6 14d ago
  Related: https://www.bensouthwood.co.uk/p/eight-architecture-myths-busted-by https://www.bensouthwood.co.uk/p/eight-architecture-myths-bu... Modernist builds aren't really cheaper.
• nitwit005 14d ago
  Plenty of people will rate the design of classic cars more highly, and will visit shows that display them. They also won't buy a car that looks like that.
• chris_armstrong 14d ago
  I think the problem can be traced back to the fact that we've failed to develop a popular design language since pre-WW2^1. That in itself could be traced back to the professionalization of building manufacturing - the small-scale building and design that happened before this industrialisation of construction did away with all the little vernacular architectural decisions that would have been part of a building's design. Far more of the labour-force was involved in building construction, and less was done with pre-fabricated materials (probably just bricks and mortar), and certainly not as much was done on a mass-scale with the same homogenous approach^2, and with much less concern for the labour costs associated with those little details that add "character" to an older building^3. I'm starting to find small examples of lower-scale construction projects in my home city (Sydney) that seem to return some interesting elements to newer building construction, like variation in materials such as perforated shading or different colours or textures of prefab cladding, using brick for feature walls in other pre-fabricated concrete buildigs, more external hanging gardens, etc). This is better, and I'm happy to see it, because while the older federation terraces in Sydney are nice to look at, they're hopelessly underdesigned for the climate (too hot in summer, too cold in winter, too dark in a country that is blessed with natural light, and often with damp and mould problems that shouldn't exist on a building post 1900). ^1 popular in the sense that its widespread amongst the general population, not the way modernism is popular with architects, both for its cost and the way its become part of the popular taste of architects as a profession ^2 the treasured old neighbourhoods in cities that are preserved and made "heritage" are the results of hundreds of individual decisions by dozens of individual builders and tradespeople, which although similar, contain enough difference to convey a sense of character. Compare that with a small team of planners working for a single construction company remaking a block or entire suburb. ^3 I could be wrong, but I would have thought labour costs were a much lower component of building construction then, or at least there was far more labour hours that go into a building's construction, allowing more time for the little details that give an older building its little characteristics like lacing, fancy brickwork or unusual reliefs.
• akk0 14d ago
  I personally generally agree, but I actually quite like the very most recently constructed buildings in my area (southwest Paris), which are still clearly modern but more generous with ornamentation and featuring more organic shapes and often incorporating greenery. I feel similar positive about new buildings in my native Netherlands, which seem to be getting less flat and with smaller, more reasonably sized windows (if you know, you know!)
• m0llusk 14d ago
  Mostly this is looking at architecture as urban sculpture. That is relevant, but the most critical experience of a building is on the inside. Modern designs spearheaded modern interior spaces including spacious corridors, atriums for exposing important views and improving navigation, and other such features. More than that modernist buildings are good at presenting functional spaces with a minimum of details to interfere with usage and customization. Different uses can add decoration or functional features as necessary as there is plenty of space available and no ornamentation to interfere with. And then there is the issue of construction. Many older designs use materials and methods that are either out of date or expensive to replicate with currently popular building materials. Simply going back to older designs is not a practical option for most buildings. There has to be some balance of old ideas with newer methods.
  • shermantanktop 14d ago
    Each room is lived in by a few people, each building has an exterior which is looked at by thousands or millions. I live in a hundred-year old house (old for the region I’m in), with rabbit warren hallways. I wouldn’t want it any other way. That might just be my taste in interiors, but (as with the article about exteriors) I suspect it is more common than all the modernist functional people would prefer.
• bickfordb 14d ago
  Everyone loves the SF painted ladies but no one seems to build new ones.
• strstr 14d ago
  I always like to look at the windows for these “more attractive” buildings. They always lead me to believe the indoor experience is worse in some way. Either cramped or similar. Sometimes they imply a dark windowless rooms. Generally, they seem like they prioritize the appearance of the building over the experience of being inside the building, which is unambiguously the more important part of the building. The funny one is the buildings that have better landscaping. A few of the buildings in the post only look attractive as a consequence of the green courtyard in front. If you cover up that part of the photo, they just don’t look as stunning compared to the other. Perhaps that’s an argument for traditional courtyards (fair enough), but it doesn’t imply the need for traditional building construction.
• belviewreview 14d ago
  Modern architecture, like modern art and modern classical music and jazz, is supposed to be ugly. That's because it is based on existentialist philosophy that believes that life is meaningless and what ordinary people consider a good life is an attempt to escape this alleged truth. The purpose of the arts is supposed to be to push the ugly truth into people's faces so they can't ignore it.
• mr-pink 14d ago
  survivorship bias is a big factor
• lIl-IIIl 13d ago
  Reminds of poetry. I read somewhere that people love poetry that rhymes and want more of it, but modern poets won't give it to them.
  • alberto-m 13d ago
    Maybe in “Whither Tartaria” by Scott Alexander, which covers a similar topic.
• jongjong 13d ago
  I like modern architecture but I wouldn't want to live in it or near it. Modern architecture is depressing.
• kazinator 13d ago
  Most people have bad taste, preferring elaborately ornate crap with multiple clashing patterns. No surprises here.
• andy_ppp 13d ago
  How funny, they chose very beautiful old architecture and very ugly modern architecture and invented a result - why not choose things like the Bahai temple in Delhi or Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright? I'm sure there are some old ugly buildings and the ones that people hated probably got torn down so there's survivorship bias in play here too!
• sfeng 13d ago
  In general you have to separate what people prefer from what they're willing to pay for. It's very clear that people will pay more for a slightly larger home with one extra bedroom or bathroom than for a smaller home with more ornate decoration. These are the forces which lead to the construction we see today: people build at the lowest cost what people will buy for the highest price.
  • watwut 13d ago
    That is a weird dichotomy. The ornate facade does not require a room of space.
• fsqcds 13d ago
  I like how modernist builings look when they are just built and new. But traditional architecture usually ages much better.
• Tanoc 13d ago
  Several things are at play here. The first is that pre-Modernist architecture was heavily designed around natural lighting and cooling. Many buildings and houses designed and built before the 1920s used combinations of materials and elements that maximized the use of daylight. Transom lights and polished marble floors for example were often used to allow light to bounce through a room and to induce airflow. The light came in from a high place and bounced from the floor to fill normally unlit spaces, while hot air was pushed up and vented through the transom windows. If you've ever been in an office building built from the 1870s through the 1940s you'll notice every single transom only opens outwards towards the hall, as the hall created a high pressure space that pushed air into the low pressure rooms, an effect that is amplified when paired with ceiling fans. Meanwhile things such as mullions allowed the windows themselves to be set more deeply inside the wall by providing a strengthening member that allowed a larger opening. That larger opening with the windows set further in provided shade while still allowing in diffused light, and helped in preventing glare upon the glass while creating an overhang using the building's facade or cornices to allow the windows to be opened while it was raining because eaves are useless above two stories of height. People don't understand these individual parts and don't understand how they all work together. But they definitely feel the cumulative effects, and those cumulative effects are much friendlier than Modernist and post-Modernist design. Modernism and all the schools that followed it rely on electric technology to fill in the gaps in the design, which makes them feel less accomodating to humans. Electric lighting, electric heating and cooling, and electro-mechanical traversal. Those things aren't as tactile, and many aren't even visible. The Modernist building does not present itself as something humans made, maintain, and interact with, but instead presents itself as a machine that you are temporarily inside of as a foreign entity because everything designed to outwardly accomodate humans is instead either streamlined down or fully away. The overhead lights shine light that you cannot influence, the hidden vents expel air from a place you cannot see or change, and the hanging facade glass walls provide no palpable separation from the outside world. Your mind tells you that this mid-century tower is a place where you do not belong.
• janpeuker 13d ago
  I dislike a badly designed mall like everyone else, but is it already sealioning if an article ends on a leading question to hide its far-right liberal conservative agenda? The National Civic Art Society is designing the White House State Ballroom [1] and Create Streets is a conservative influence group that likes speaking at Reform UK events [2]. As many others here have pointed out, visual preference, especially in such a binary choice between obviously cheap and ugly vs expensive and generous, is of course highly biased - pseudo greek style doesn't fly in Asia, even in Australia minimalist styles are much more en vogue. The most important claims like "exclusively teaches broadly modernist styles" are completely unsupported - especially when a few lines down they literally use their own review of an architect's design, but then call it "in a style drawing on Victorian commercial architecture and Art Deco", again unsubstantiated - it has pretty "modern" clear lines, probably due to sustainability [3], and brick facades themselves have been around for long. In the report they praise the 2010 (!) London city building design guide recommending exactly this brick design. "hardly a single public commission" and "we commissioning styles"? Where is the line between justifying dictator-style grandiose architecture and the actual empathy needed for simply good design? I'm just asking questions. 1) https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/29/justin-shubow-trump-architecture-executive-order-interview/ https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/29/justin-shubow-trump-archit... 2) https://www.building.co.uk/focus/reform-uk-conference-funding-furore-overshadows-radical-planning-proposals/5143969.article https://www.building.co.uk/focus/reform-uk-conference-fundin... 3) https://www.archpaper.com/2025/10/biennale-architettura-carlo-ratti-justin-shubow-classical-architecture-mandate/ https://www.archpaper.com/2025/10/biennale-architettura-carl...
• TomMasz 13d ago
  I wonder how many of the competitions for new buildings include traditional designs as candidates. Are people picking modernist designs because that's all there is to choose from? Also, cost doesn't seem to be mentioned. Are traditional designs more expensive to build?
• cassepipe 12d ago
  Relevant Scott Alexander's blog post: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/whither-tartaria https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/whither-tartaria
• Yizahi 11d ago
  "In other words, there seems to be a mysterious divergence between people’s stated and revealed preferences. Why are we commissioning styles that we say we dislike?" Oh, this is actually pretty obvious to explain. There are several equally big reasons, in no particular order here: - Modernist/brutalist/bauhaus etc. building with any stated use type is on paper cheaper to build, because it removes all aesthetic features and many functional features - like rain pipes, slanted roof in favor of flat roof, human oriented features like benches etc. It will be much more expensive to maintain in long run, due to the environmental damage from missing functional features, but that's not architect's problem then. - These buildings are build as a class warfare. Notice the stark difference between designs of private houses where higher class actually lives, and the designs which the are commissioning for the common public. - Performative architecture. The weirder the art form, the better PR and resulting fame.